Once
by saramon
Summary: They were men, once.


Now look:

They were men, once.

Not all together, not all at the same time, but each had once lived and done great things and as a reward they had become gods.

No, not gods, because gods moved on their own. Gods controlled men. To them, men were the gods, and they were the avatars of the gods. Golems. Created from mud (like all men, once long ago), but made to suffer in place of others.

And look:

Was it when men first told stories, first known they had a history together? What group of men first realized that being together meant being set apart?

Because it could not have come long after that, these golems. A tribe meant a connection, and a connection meant empathy, shared pain, and magic was _more_ in those days, and when the soldier was killed, didn't all of them feel the cut?

And so the elder, the strongest leader, took upon himself the pain of the tribe. He made it so he took the wounds, so only he felt the pain of the connection. Other men became elders, but the first elder stayed, and stayed apart because the tribe could not understand his choice to take up the pain. He did not die because he lived for the tribe, until the tribe was gone and then he was gone too.

And some of the roving tribes stopped roving, and they claimed land for themselves, and now the king's job was to protect the land and the land became part of the tribe. So the strongest king took the land's pain as well.

It was a burden, a heavy burden, but not a forever burden because tribes merged and land was picked away and these thousands of small kingdoms never lasted very long.

But look:

Something that was once a man is lying facedown in the mud on a battlefield in Germany. His back is full of holes, leaking what (in a man) would be his lifeblood. The pain is nothing – anyway, he can't really feel it, because one of the bullets has severed his spine and his body is numb. This is nothing to someone who has felt his limbs torn off, to someone who has staggered for hours with intestines (his own) clutched in his hands, to someone who has thought he was blinded by smoke, then touched his face and realized his eyes were missing –

This is nothing, and he lies facedown in the mud, waiting for his spine to heal.

It will heal within a matter of hours.

He knows this because it has done so for a thousand years.

Golems must be repaired, or they cannot protect the tribe. He was a man once.

Limbs and eyes regrow, pulped organs organize themselves, and tomorrow he will put a suit over his scarred body and attend a meeting, try to sort this mess out. (Not that he can sort anything out, because he has no more power than any man trying to sort this mess out. Less, because he is not a man.)

Tomorrow, he will look into the sad eyes of Germany, who will tell him again that the Final Solution must be implemented. He will look into the mad eyes of Russia, who will whisper again that he only wants to be left alone. They will look into _his_ eyes (what do they see?) and he will instruct them to keep calm and carry on, for what else can he say?

They were men, once.

None of them know the names the others went by in life (real life, not this -). They all say it is because they are not those people anymore.

He wonders, facedown in the mud, if it is because they worry they don't remember those people anymore.

To the world he goes by Arthur, but he doesn't know –

Was he really Arthur, King of All Britons, Now and Forevermore (although he never knew the last part when he pulled the sword from its stone, did he?), unitor of Albion, the greatest King of England?

Or was he really Merlin, who the legends say was trapped by Nimue, never to be free but never to die, and of course, there are different kinds of trapped and maybe one kind meant the whole world was yours and not yours?

Or perhaps the two men were – are - one and the same.

Facedown in the mud, he thinks, _I never chose this._

Facedown in the mud, he thinks, _It was never meant to go on forever._

But railing against it doesn't help, and neither does retreating from it (for sometimes the golem can refuse to fight, and then what can the tribe do but wait?), because the other golems come knocking at your door, and you can only hold the door shut for so long.

Facedown in the mud, he thinks about the end of this war.

The end is coming soon. Germany is empty again, and America is making a bomb. Japan (his eyes are the worst, because they still hold the memory of the painless peace he had for two hundred years) says calmly that he will not surrender, but the peace in his eyes is overlaid with panic, imagining the tear of that explosion.

The war is horrible, but they have all felt the pain of it before. The part after the war is the bad part.

In the old days, the tribe gloried in the spoils. They cut the golem of the losing tribe to shreds, this piece to me, this to my daughter, this for us to share. The golem was dead by then, because in the old days victory meant the end to that fight. The golems were dead in their time, and it was a fair way to victory.

He imagines what he will see after this war.

He will see Germany watch as his heart is sliced into pieces (the tribes have already divided Berlin among them). He will see pieces of Italy and Japan torn off and restored to their original owners. He will see Prussia finally, finally vanish, and the light that fades in his eyes as he is sliced will be relief, for (like them all) Prussia is too old.

The older they become, the more the noose strangles. The larger the empire, the smaller the cage.

No one wants to win anymore.

They were men, once.

Facedown in the mud, he waits.

He waits for the day when England will fall.


End file.
